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www.postmagazine.com 40 POST JULY 2016 EDUCATION & RECRUITMENT 'The Present' Sometimes it's the aesthetic that drives a short film. Other times it is the story. In the case of "The Present," an animated short directed and animated by Jacob Frey from Filmakademie, there is no doubt that the story is the driving force — not because the aesthetic is weak in any way. In fact, the opposite is true. But, rather, because the story is so very strong. "The Present" tells the story of a little boy who spends most of his time indoors playing video games. One day his mom decides to give him an unusual present, which is about to change his life. "For me, the great thing about this short is its story," says Frey. And, he is not alone in that assessment. As the story develops, it takes audienc- es through a range of emotions. When the boy is introduced, he seems to be the typical teen who likes to play video games. His initial attitude toward his pres- ent, a dog, is off-putting. From that point on, viewers are taken on an emotional roller-coaster ride as their feelings toward the boy continually change as the story progresses. To provide more details would spoil the ending for new viewers. "I spent a lot of time on getting the character's emotional change working. With only three minutes (the film is 3:23), it's hard to make an emotional change believable and not have the character feel bipolar," says Frey. The story is based on a Brazilian Web comic by Fabio "Coala" Cavalcanti. When an English-translated version of one of his particular comics appeared online, Frey stumbled upon it and was inspired. "The moment I read the comic, I immediately knew that I had to turn it into a short film," he says. "The story was extremely emotional, and the twist at the end totally caught me off guard. The setup was perfect for a short film, and I had a strong vision on how to translate it motion-capture studio on campus to re- cord a few scenes for reference, but never did review those results. Bringhurst and Roberts came up with a method that bal- anced pose-to-pose and straight-ahead animation, but while it worked well for the two of them, disseminating it to the team was somewhat challenging. "A fair number of scenes were turned in with very few keyframes, leaving Maya's auto-splining to do the major- ity of the steering," says Bringhurst. "Getting rid of the resultant robotic, stiff motion meant adding additional keyframes and deliberate poses to give it more personality." The ghost's transparency and glow- ing effect were done completely in After Effects, using a complex blend of effects and layers and involving fractal noise, Gaussian blur, matte chokers, color manip- ulation and lots of alpha track masks. Rendering was accomplished using Mental Images' Mental Ray. The film contains three unique simula- tions. Goulding designed the grass using an xGen setup, duplicating custom blades of grass that he made. He also made a collision system using paint effects so the grass could move under the charac- ters' feet and other objects. But as the deadline drew nearer, all the blending was done instead within After Effects. "Our biggest technical challenges were by far the rendering and the grass effects," says Bringhurst. "We hadn't had any classes yet on either, so we were largely self-taught." Robbins created the cloud system using a static smoke simulation within a volume container. Roberts, meanwhile, provided the effect of the leaves blowing in the background by creating a cloth sim- ulation that was driven by a wind engine. He used a few camera tricks to make just one animated render that could be repli- cated with variations in After Effects. There were two times in the produc- tion when the group had to stop and re-evaluate their work. The first was at the urging of an instructor, with performanc- es that formed a more cohesive narrative. "A lot of our team reacted negatively at first. It's hard to give up something you just spent four months of your life work- ing on," says Bringhurst. "We hashed out an entirely new system for critiquing and treated it like a re-awakening. In the end, it was one of the best things we could have done for the short." The second resulted from words of wisdom from Taylor, who had been mentoring the group from the East Coast. While in Utah, he invited the students over. "Roberts, Robbins, and I went, hoping to have praise heaped upon us, but instead, he just seemed confused and a little disappointed," recalls Bringhurst. After listening to the critique, "we realized that we had to go back to square one yet again on a lot of stuff." Heeding the advice, the crew redid some shots, created new ones, and polished the rest. They also reworked all the textures and omitted environmental elements that were too distracting. "We bonded a lot over the experience, and, much like our January reboot, our short was far better as a result." Indeed, the restarts throughout the project — some more extensive than others — became valuable learning experiences. "The biggest lesson I took away from the experience was that there's no such thing as wasted time if you spend it working on something you care about," says Bringhurst. "We had to start over so many times that a lot of us felt like we were spinning our wheels. Yet each time we started over, [the film] got better and better. Our first efforts were never a waste because we learned what worked and what didn't work, and came back wiser and more skilled. Learning to let go of things that weren't working, losing that fear of failure, that was huge."